Blog Commenting and Criticism: A Guide

It is easy to criticize a blog.  It is best to do so inside your own damned head.

Comment all you want, assuming you can figure out how to do it without selling your virtual soul to Google (I haven't, figured it out, that is).  Praise is always good and questions show you are thinking about the substance, if any, of a particular post.  Many blogs ask questions, some over and over, and you should feel free to answer.  Unless the question is something like "Huh?"

Don't bring up extraneous issues, like facts or pronouncements of FOX News.  Such items will confuse the blogger and make the next post seem completely opaque or like one from last month.

Many readers criticize a blogger because they envy the blogger's writing skill and, rarely, philosophical agility.  But mostly, they are really jealous of the blogger's courage to express the shallowest and meanest of thoughts for dozens to read.  Such critics are probably only able to occasionally express their own rude snappishness at the living room LCD when Serena makes yet another bad boyfriend choice on "Gossip Girl" (she drives me... viewers nuts with that stuff).

At heart, Bloggers don't like criticism all that much and know where you live and what car you keep in your parking space or garage, especially if it is always there, like a Toyota, maybe.  On the other hand, most bloggers no long have recognizable physical forms and only exist in that layer of the Cloud known as the Blogosphere.  Or an unnamed Caribbean Island.  So maybe, you are pretty safe after all.

Still, do not openly criticize bloggers in comments unless your corporate-free-speaking employer orders you to.  Criticism might have a chilling effect on the diversity of opinions that is (or are, in England) the key element of the Blogosphere.   No two bloggers have the same opinions or read the same British tabloid.  Moreover, each blogger has his, her or its own stylistic choices, focusing, naturally, on commas and parenthetical asides. 

And, if you try it for a couple weeks, you 'll find blogging is not as easy or rewarding as it looked.  After slaving for an hour on your occasionally daily post, you'd expect to get the best table at the nearby Red Lobster, but there really isn't one.  That pile of nano-dollars you earn when your sisters click on Google Adsense ads, in which they have no earthly interest, won't quite buy you a bread stick at Olive Garden.  Celebrities you selflessly promote remain aloof.  Does Oprah so much as call?  Do you get even a brief text "hi' from any tub-hawking. bare-kneed starlet you might have mentioned a couple times?

So, comment, sure.  Even be anonymous, if you want.  Go right ahead.  But, whatever you do, don't expect a civil answer.